Wednesday, October 19, 2016

In thinking about how Service Providers are implementing technologies such as SDN and NFV in their central offices, it is becoming clear that edge services and a lot of traditional services can now be deployed as virtual entities. There is a need to extend control of these virtual entities all the way back into the network in a single service chain.

In this 90-second video, Colin Kincaid, CTO - Service Provider for Cisco, discusses this network transformation.

Digital Realty plans to expand its colocation facility on Cermak Road in Chicago into one of the largest data centers in the world.

Specifically, CBRE Group has commenced pre-leasing for a new data center at 330 East Cermak Road in Chicago, to be developed by Digital Realty on a site adjacent to Lakeside Technology Center at 350 Cermak, which is one of the largest existing data centers in the U.S. at 1.1 million square feed and also one of the largest interconnection hubs in the world with over 110 service providers in the building.

Upon completion, which is expected to be within two years of breaking ground, the 330 East Cermak data center will provide up to 698,000 square feet and 54 megawatts of utility load. The new data center building will be 12 stories high and will provide zero-latency connections to the meet-me-rooms at 350 East Cermak.
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“Data center demand is surging, driven by the rapid growth of cloud adoption and corporate IT outsourcing,” said Todd Bateman, North American Agency Practice Leader for CBRE’s Data Center Solutions Group. “Demand is outpacing supply, both at the national level and within the Chicago area in particular. The state-of-the-art proposed design at 330 East Cermak, along with the proximity to Lakeside Technology Center at 350 East Cermak, would address market demand and provide prospective customers with the expansion capacity and network density to meet their colocation and interconnection needs.”

“We are delighted to be working with CBRE to build upon the success of our connected campus strategy in Chicago,” said A. William Stein, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer. “With the expansion of our Cermak flagship, Digital Realty will be even better positioned to future-proof our customers’ growth, while simultaneously satisfying their most performance-sensitive requirements.”

Sprint has selected DragonWave's microwave backhaul equipment for network deployment as part of the company's densification and optimization strategy. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Specifically, DragonWave's microwave backhaul equipment will be used as part of Sprint's strategy to significantly densify its network through the deployment of small cells and other solutions, with the goal of further improving network performance and the customer experience.

DragonWave said it was selected for the combination of its dual channel capability and industry leading system gain, as well as its advanced network security capabilities.

"We look forward to continuing our work with DragonWave as part of our densification and optimization strategy," said Gunther Ottendorfer, COO of Technology at Sprint. "Microwave backhaul is a cost-efficient, reliable alternative when used in the right ring structures, and it's a key part of the extension of our overall toolkit as we work to provide customers with more consistent coverage, better reliability, and even faster data speeds."

"DragonWave is pleased to extend our relationship with Sprint, and we know that we can bring unique performance advantages that can be leveraged in its network densification efforts," said Peter Allen, President & CEO, DragonWave. "We look forward to supporting Sprint's growth and expansion by delivering on our commitment to provide unmatched product performance, reliability and support."

The fine is part of a settlement resolving an investigation into whether the company adequately disclosed speed and data restrictions for its “unlimited” data plan subscribers.

At issue is the policy of slowing down data speeds when T-Mobile or MetroPCS customers on so-called “unlimited” plans exceed a monthly data threshold. The FCC found that T-Mobile did not provide its customers with accurate and sufficient information about the unlimited data plan.

“Consumers should not have to guess whether so-called ‘unlimited’ data plans contain key restrictions, like speed constraints, data caps, and other material limitations,” said FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc. “When broadband providers are accurate, honest and upfront in their ads and disclosures, consumers aren’t surprised and they get what they’ve paid for. With today’s settlement, T-Mobile has stepped up to the plate to ensure that its customers have the full information they need to decide whether ‘unlimited’ data plans are right for them.”

Today’s settlement includes $48 million in total financial commitments from T-Mobile. This includes a $7.5 million fine in addition to $35.5 million in consumer benefits offered to T-Mobile and Metro PCS customers with “unlimited” plans and at least $5 million in services and equipment to American schools to bridge the homework gap facing today’s students. Eligible subscribers will be offered discounts on accessories and additional data.

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) announced plans to merge.

The combined organization, which will operate under the ONF name, will be led by ON.Lab Founder and Executive Director, Guru Parulkar. It will bring together the operations, membership, budget and employees of both organizations, including ONF’s 110 member companies and ON.Lab’s ecosystem of more than 70 companies and 17 partners.

“Over the last few years, it has become clear that SDN standards and open source software development must come together. Open source is critical to SDN deployment,” said Parulkar. “With the combination of ONF and ON.Lab, we are shaping the future of networking by bringing standards and open source efforts under a single umbrella. This will build real synergy between the two – letting open source development and deployment guide standards development. We believe that standards based on widely adopted open source projects such as ODL, ONOS, OPNFV, and CORD can be more widely and easily implemented within the industry. This emphasis on open source, supported by ON.Lab’s successful software development, will guide ONF’s ongoing standards work, including updates to OpenFlow.”

ONF will be governed by an interim board of directors through the end of 2017. This board will be comprised of one delegate elected by the ONF membership and additional delegates from AT&T, Google, and NTT Communications. SK Telecom will represent CORD on this interim board and Verizon will represent ONOS. The interim board will also include ONF Co-Founder Nick McKeown; current ONF board member and Princeton University Professor, Dr. Jennifer Rexford; and Dr. Guru Parulkar.

ONF will continue advancing ONOS, the software-defined networking (SDN) OS, and the Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD) open source projects, which are led by ON.Lab and The Linux Foundation. The organization will also work with other open source projects such as OpenDaylight and the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) to ensure that future ONF standards, including ongoing updates to OpenFlow, are derived from a consensus among these open source developer communities.

The companies have previously collaborated to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss Middleware to Ericsson customers. The collaboration will now focus on NFV infrastructure (NFVi), OpenStack, SDN, SDI and containers and help define the next generation of modern technology for the communications industry, including:

Upstream collaboration: The companies are taking an “upstream first” approach to collaboration across open source projects and communities - including OPNFV, OpenStack, and OpenDaylight - to address customer concerns about lock-in resulting from proprietary forks, differentiating the partnership from other providers. Engineering teams from both companies will collaborate to address customer requirements in upstream open source projects, helping accelerate technology innovation for scalable cloud deployments.

Solution certification and new joint offerings: Red Hat and Ericsson are collaborating on hardware and software roadmaps, aimed at developing new joint offerings for NFV infrastructure, SDN and SDI. Through the collaboration, the companies plan to work together to certify Ericsson’s platform and portfolio of solutions including Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment, Ericsson Cloud SDN solution, and Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenStack Platform, and backed by reference architectures and labs.

Ericsson is expanding its NFV infrastructure solution to also include Red Hat OpenStack Platform to meet the needs of service providers across the globe who require a fully open and agile infrastructure. For their joint NFV infrastructure, SDN and SDI solutions, the companies plan to work together to offer easy-to-deploy solutions, including automated deployment and management.

Technical alignment to advance container innovation and adoption: Both Red Hat and Ericsson see container technologies as a major part of the platform evolution and will collaborate in upstream activities, in for example the CNCF and OCI communities.

Seven more organizations have joined the CORD Project as collaborators, including Canonical, Mellanox, US Ignite, Viavi, Villa-Tech, Windstream and Xilinx have joined as collaborators.

CORD, which stands for Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter, is an open source collaboration advancing the leading open source service delivery platform that combines SDN, NFV, and elastic cloud services to redefine network access. The project is hosted by The Linux Foundation.

"New member and community growth are pivotal in accelerating adoption of critical CORD production use cases, demos and proof of concepts,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director and CORD board member. “Thanks to the Broadband Forum (BBF) community embracing CORD, we have the opportunity to showcase R-CORD this week through demos, interactive sessions and panels.”